Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 48

Yesterday we descended back into the nightmarish realms of Tartarus and followed another bridge to a parallel world. The first parallel world was a jump into a future where Luka never went on his adventures and thus was not there to oppose Ilias when she set her angels loose on the world. The second parallel world was a rather sedate jump into the past to where a settlement was not destroyed. The third parallel world...

...is in a very bad way. That's the world map by the way.

The sea has gone. Some kind of darkness has eaten great chunks of this world. Both Sylph and Gnome let us know that the wind and earth are dead.

They're dead Dave. Everybody's dead Dave.

There's an ominous earthquake the moment we arrive. It seems we've come to this world at the moment of its final collapse. There isn't even much to explore. There's a small island around the Tartarus pit and a mysterious tower to the east. The encounters here are the same monster girls encountered in Tartarus III.

Time to check out that tower then. I'm hoping they have something to renew HP/MP as I can't access the Pocket Castle here and there's nothing resembling an inn.

At the entrance we're greeted by Radio, a cute little machine girl that hops around on one leg.

She fills us in on this world and it doesn't make for good news. The world is ending. The last human died 25 years ago. The last demon 6 years ago. There's just this tower left. Radio offers to lead us to her master waiting up on the top floor. She tells us to be careful as there are plenty of monster girls roaming around to guard against apoptosis.

Thankfully we find one of those endless pots of healing down the right-hand corridor. There's also a book that stands in for both the head priest at Ilias's temple and the maid in the Pocket Castle as it allows us to change party members and job/race. It being here is a little ominous.

The first monster I run into here is...

...Paintgeist?

What are you doing outside of Chrome's mansion?

TTR seems to be using this location as somewhere to put all the monster girls from Monster Girl Quest: Chapter 3 that wouldn't otherwise have a home. So we run into the paintgeist and shadow girl from the return to Chrome's mansion, and the second iron maiden girl and weird chimera from the return to Witch Hunt Village.

It makes sense, but is also a little disappointing that the final location in the first chapter seems mostly stocked with reruns.

There is one new monster girl – Junk Doll.

She's one of UN_DO's creations, which means she has more than one request scene.

Being made out of a bunch of sex dolls fused together means Luka has plenty of 'holes' to choose from.

Although having so many 'parts' to attend to will end up with Luka suffering from terminal manjuice depletion if he's not careful.

The higher affection scenes are both a little odd and short. They're variations on the same art. In the first the blonde doll torso wanks Luka off rather than letting his dick enter older doll sister's vagina.

In the 100-affection scene Luka gets to put his cock in soft artificial pussy, only for the scene to be over before it's even got going (maybe I'm still spoilt by the extended Xelvy scenes from yesterday).

I think the lower floor in the tower is to allow the player to grind (oo-er missus!) Honey Pots for job XP.

One word of caution. This tower is a lost forever location. I did try to go back afterwards after completing the section, only for the game to tell me it didn't exist anymore. So if you want to grab everything from here, make sure you do it before triggering the last segment. (It was fortunate I managed to recruit Junk Doll after the first or second encounter, as this section would be very light on the smexy otherwise).

Going up a floor and there are more tremors. Looks like we really don't have much time before the last remaining fragments of this world disintegrate.

On this floor there are various rooms and entering each reveals a flashback to the tragic last moments of the tower.

It seems like this tower was where life tried to make a last, final stand. There's a room where an alraune is trying to preserve the last remaining flowers. They're preserved now, but in the artificial, lifeless forever sense. Another room shows the last stand of the refugees as apoptosis overcomes the last guards and bursts in to exterminate everyone.

Interesting. Is apoptosis an individual?

The next shows the lighter side of human-monster girl relations as they found a teddy bear for a young girl during their last hunt for supplies. Unfortunately it goes horribly wrong as the humans start mutating into apoptotic horrors. In another room and in the library the various scientists come to the conclusion that it's all hopeless and the only thing they can do is document everything. They want to leave behind evidence they at least tried to fight.

There's no-one left now – just Radio and her mysterious master. We continue up to the top floor to meet the last inhabitant of this dead existence. Just who will it be?

It's a perception I've been trying to change with my own writing for a while. There are certain rules that need to be followed when creating porn/erotica, but that doesn't mean everything else should be neglected.

Wait... This is a PORN GAME!? I thought it was just a very strange reimagining of the classic Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games! (Notice how Ch. 3 of MGQ seems to mirror FFIV, with Illias doing her own interpretation of Kefka Palazzo from FFVI?)

Yes. Apoptosis is the general name given to the monsters found in Tartarus holes, like the ones we saw yesterday.

The name of their race in japanese is called 「下位アポトーシス」. The first part, 「下位」, means "low-rank", or "minor" as it is in the translation. 「アポトーシス」 is a word written with katakana, meaning that it's either a modern word or it's been borrowed from another language. Written in our letters, it becomes: a-po-to-o-shi-su. It's quite clearly "apoptosis".

Like that, it becomes "Minor Apoptosis". It's currently translated as "Minor Chaos" but I suspect it's subject to change.

"Chaos" does seem a better fit for what's going on. "Apoptosis" is a curiously specific word to use though. They could have chosen it just because it sounds cool, or it could be a hint that's what happening is some kind of programmed universe death to preserve the greater collection of universes from some other threat.

... I knew that you'd probably say that... and I do not regret it. Still, it might be pretty difficult to pull off, considering that Langoliers only exist in the mythos of Stephen King, not to mention... Floating meatballs with triangular mouths combined with cute(-ish?)-looking girls? That would be one HELL of a character description. Also, there's a problem with the amount of NOPE! the concept itself bellies.

... Did you see pics of Eater yet? She's one of the monster girls. Only has a lethal request scene. She's a giant fleshy "flower" (...only describing the general shape, nothing else) with three petals (with tooth-edges), and a girl sitting between the petals. She always looks emotionless, calls Luka "Onii-sama" or something along the lines, and is only concerned with how tasty things ("things" includes "people") are.

But if in doubt, do the boring standard MGQ version: Slap a female torso on top of it and let her say "my digestive juices are totally sexy".

It seems to me that the explanation for this apoptosis is that the more any given universe deviates from the plot of MGQ (as in Luka saves the world with Alice from Illas) the more likely that it will be destroyed by apoptosis. So, correct me if im wrong, but I think that means that any time that you get a bad end in either game, that results in the inevitable destruction of the world. Which is an interesting take on some of those bad ends, add "and then the world ends" onto the end text of all of the bad ends in the game.

Pretty much. At least at one time, an enemy outright states she can't attack Luka & Co, since they're still to close to the original timeline and killing them would drastically speed up the destruction of "this world".

"One word of caution. This tower is a lost forever location. I did try to go back afterwards after completing the section, only for the game to tell me it didn't exist anymore." Nope, don't worry. Go to the east of the final Tartarus _ you'll find parts of the tower "spilled over" into the main Paradox world - including the monsters and any unique loot.